Apollo loved the Laconian prince Hyacinthus and taught him to throw the discus; when the god's cast rebounded from the earth and struck the boy, Phoebus could not heal him, and from his blood rose the flower that bears the letters of the god's grief — while Apollodorus names the death plainly and Hyginus lists the prince among Apollo's beloved boys.1
The beloved prince
Hyginus names Hyacinthus son of Oebalus among the handsome youths whom Apollo loved. Apollodorus makes him a son of Amyclas and says he was beloved of Apollo — the god's favourite in the Spartan line, honoured beside the altar at Amyclae.2
The discus
Ovid sets the death in the games Phoebus and the boy played together. The god hurled his discus far; it struck the hard earth and bounded back into Hyacinthus' face. Apollo, paler than his dying favourite, tried every herb in vain — the wound was beyond healing.3
The flower
As the blood ran into the grass Apollo changed it to a flower more brilliant than Tyrian dye and inscribed his grief upon the petals — the letters AI AI. Apollodorus states the death without the bloom: Hyacinthus was killed by Apollo involuntarily with the cast of a quoit. Sparta kept his fame and yearly feast.4
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How the centuries saw it
The Death of Hyacinthos
Jean Broc, 1801
Broc's Neoclassical canvas — Apollo cradling the Spartan youth struck by the discus, the flower still to rise from the spilled blood.
The Death of Hyacinth (La morte di Giacinto)
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1752–1753
Tiepolo's Thyssen canvas updates the fatal sport with tennis racquet and balls — Apollo's grief under a luminous Rococo sky.
Apollo and Hyacinth (fresco, Palazzo Farnese)
Domenichino, 1603–1604
Domenichino's Farnese fresco — the god bending over the fallen prince, athletic play reversed into mourning in Ovid's Book X.
Apollo, Hyacinthus and Cyparissus Playing Music and Singing
Alexander Ivanov, 1831–1834
Ivanov's idyll before the discus — Apollo at music with Hyacinthus and Cyparissus, the bloom of youth that makes the later death cut deeper.